during that wretched
period of my life. My adventures, in themselves, were worthy of record and
my memories of them and of the men and women encountered in them are clear
and vivid. It is natural that I should wish to set them down for the
edification of my posterity and of any who may chance to read them.

For my experience has been, I believe, unique. Since the establishment of
the Principate in our Republic many men, even an uncountable horde of men,
have incurred Imperial displeasure. Of these not a few, after banishment
from Italy or relegation to guarded islands or to some distant frontier
outpost, have survived the Prince who exiled them and have, by the favor
of his successors, been permitted to return to Rome and to the enjoyment
of their property. But I believe that no Roman nobleman implicated, justly
or unjustly, in any conspiracy against the life of his Sovereign, ever
escaped the extreme penalty of death. Some, by their own hands,
forestalled the arrival of the Imperial emissaries, others perished by the
weapons or implements of those designated to abolish the enemies of the
Prince. Except myself not one ever survived to regain Imperial favor in a
later reign; except myself not one ever recovered his patrimony and
enjoyed, to a green old age, the income, position and privileges to which
he had been born. If such a thing ever occurred, certainly there is no
record of any other nobleman domiciled in Italy, except myself, having
grasped at the slender chance of escape afforded by the device of
arranging that he be supposed dead, of disguising himself, of vanishing
among the populace, of passing himself off for a man of the people. I not
only was led, by my clever slave, to attempt this histrionic feat, but I
succeeded in the face of unimaginable difficulties. An experience so
notably without a parallel seems peculiarly deserving of such a record as
follows.

BOOK I

DISASTER

CHAPTER I

AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

When I look back on the beginning of my adventures, I can set the very day
and hour when the tranquil course of my early life came to an end, when
the comfortable commonplaces of my previous existence altered, when the
placid current of my former life broke suddenly and without warning into
the tumultuous rapids which hurried me from surprise to surprise and from
peril to peril. The last hour of my serene youth was about the ninth of
the day, nearly midafternoon, on the Nones of June